Restoring a File from an EaseUS Todo Image Backup

Even though an image backup contains everything, that doesn't mean you need to restore it all if you only need one file.

In a prior article, we created an image backup of your PC using the free version of EaseUS Todo.

Image backups are one of the most important types of backups, because they backupabsolutely everything. Should you need to replace a failed hard drive, for example, an image backup will restore everything and let you continue as if nothing had happened.

But what if you don’t want everything? What if you just need a single file you know is somewhere in that image backup?

Locate the image

If it’s a full backup, then only the single “.pbd” file is necessary. If it’s in an incremental backup, you’ll need the full image backup that it was based on, plus all the intervening incremental backups as well.

The files will be wherever you instructed EaseUS to place them when you created your image backup. Typically, that’s on your external backup drive, but it could be almost anywhere with sufficient storage space for your collection of backups.

Navigate to that location in Windows File Explorer.

In the example, above the image file is located in:

E: – my external backup drive. I told EaseUS Todo to place the image files here when I created my backup.

Disk 0 – the name of the folder EaseUS Todo created to represent the disk drive it was backing up.

The name of the image file itself — “Disk 0_20170810_Full_v1.pbd” — includes the disk name, the date of the backup, the type of the backup (Full), and the first version of a backup on that date.

If you have multiple files, or if you have incrementals, locate the most recent file so as to access the most recently backed-up files. (If you need to get a file from “a week ago”, for example, locate the image file that corresponds to the backup taken immediately after that time.)

Double-click on that file. EaseUS Todo1 will “mount” the file, making its contents visible within Windows File Explorer.

Navigating the image

Windows File Explorer will open to the top-level contents contained in the image file.

In the example above, the image file contains backups of two drives: “C:” and “R:”. Those drive letters were assigned by the system to the two hard drives (or partitions) that were backed up.

Double-click on the drive containing the file(s) you want to restore. In our example, that’ll be the original “C:” drive.

What you’ll see is the contents of the root of the C: drive as it was when the backup was taken. You can now navigate through that backup image and examine its contents, using Windows File Explorer just as you would with any other drive.

Restoring your file

Remember, this isn’t the “real” C:; this is all contained within the backup image stored on your external hard drive.

To restore a file — such as the “New Text Document.txt” file in the example above — simply copy it to any folder you like on your actual hard drive — the “real” C: — using any technique you’re comfortable with: drag and drop, copy/paste, or something else.

That’s all there is to it.

You can repeat this process for as many different files, or even entire folders, as you want to restore from your backup image.

This article is included in my book, Backing Up In Windows 10, available now. Top-to-bottom, end-to-end, Backing Up In Windows 10 will walk you through all the steps you need to keep your data safe, using Windows 10’s built in tools, as well as a free alternative.

Leo Who?

I'm Leo Notenboom and I've been playing with computers since I took a required programming class in 1976. I spent over 18 years as a software engineer at Microsoft, and after "retiring" in 2001 I started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place to help you find answers and become more confident using this amazing technology at our fingertips. More about Leo.

9 comments on “Restoring a File from an EaseUS Todo Image Backup”

Leo, just saw this Backup Newsletter… and as I have been running EaseUs TO DO Backup for several years, I’m going to peruse your article in detail. It’s been a satisfactory program for me… and once when something messed up my system so I couldn’t get it to do start… I used the restore from a separate usb drive I use for backups.. and it took a while, and while some programs that put a code in a particular sector, or wherever, needed me to put in the install code again… everything restored properly. The program seems to just keep on chugging along… and does what it’s supposed to do.

Restoring a File From EaseUS
Hi Leo,
When you find the file you want to recover in your EaseUS image, right-click on it and a menu will open and provide a list of options, such as “restore to original location.”

Lloyd,
? Does the list of options allow one to restore a full-backup image to a DIFFERENT hard drive [options when the saved image file is right clicked] ?
Most apps don’t seem to give a definitive answer, simply assume the full-backup image will overwrite the original].
? Assuming not, and that I boot from a EaseUs recovery image/boot cd: Could I fool the restore file into actually restoring to a different drive by temporarily changing the drive signature of the recipient drive before restore; i.e. give the recipient drive the signature that the donor drive did have whilst it created the full-image backup file ?

Under the 2nd paragraph in the section “Locate the image” it says if it’s in an incremental backup you will need the full image backup that it was based on plus all the intervening incremental backups as well. The first nightly incremental image in the new month is a “full” image. Using Ease us todo TBImage Explorer I am able to open individual files in this image as well as in the next 3 nightly Backups. When I get to the 4th nightly Backup this procedure no longer works. What am I doing wrong? I have windows 10 with the latest update.
The procedure using Windows File Explorer does not work at all!

It sounds like the 4th image might be damaged. If that’s the case, I’d move all the backups after number 3 to another folder or another drive (just in case there is recoverable information) and take an incremental backup which would be the new 4th backup. Hopefully, the backups should work after that.

I have tried that twice before and on both occasions it worked for a couple of times and then it no longer worked!

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